The Romantics - The British Library Theme: Romanticism Dr Stephanie Forward explains the key ideas and influences of Romanticism, and considers their place in the work of writers including Wordsworth, Blake, P B Shelley and Keats. Today the word ‘romantic’ evokes images of love and sentimentality, but the term ‘Romanticism’ has a much wider meaning. It covers a range of developments in art, literature, music and philosophy, spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The ‘Romantics’ would not have used the term themselves: the label was applied retrospectively, from around the middle of the 19th century. In 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared in The Social Contract: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ During the Romantic period major transitions took place in society, as dissatisfied intellectuals and artists challenged the Establishment. In England, the Romantic poets were at the very heart of this movement. They were inspired by a desire for liberty, and they denounced the exploitation of the poor. There was an emphasis on the importance of the individual; a conviction that people should follow ideals rather than imposed conventions and rules.

The Romantics renounced the rationalism and order associated with the preceding Enlightenment era, stressing the importance of expressing authentic personal feelings. They had a real sense of responsibility to their fellow men: they felt it was their duty to use their poetry to inform and inspire others, and to change society. Revolution When reference is made to Romantic verse, the poets who generally spring to mind are William Blake (1757-1827), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and John Keats (1795-1821). These writers had an intuitive feeling that they were ‘chosen’ to guide others through the tempestuous period of change. This was a time of physical confrontation; of violent rebellion in parts of Europe and the New World. Conscious of anarchy across the English Channel, the British government feared similar outbreaks.

The early Romantic poets tended to be supporters of the French Revolution, hoping that it would bring about political change; however, the bloody Reign of Terror shocked them profoundly and affected their views. In his youth William Wordsworth was drawn to the Republican cause in France, until he gradually became disenchanted with the Revolutionaries. Painting of the storming of the Bastille, 1789 Depiction of the storming of the Bastille, Paris - the event that triggered the French Revolution. Copyright: © De Agostini Picture Library The imagination The Romantics were not in agreement about everything they said and did: far from it! Nevertheless, certain key ideas dominated their writings. They genuinely thought that they were prophetic figures who could interpret reality. The Romantics highlighted the healing power of the imagination, because they truly believed that it could enable people to transcend their troubles and their circumstances. Their creative talents could illuminate and transform the world into a coherent vision, to regenerate mankind spiritually. In A Defence of Poetry (1821), Shelley elevated the status of poets: ‘They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit…’.

[1] He declared that ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’. This might sound somewhat pretentious, but it serves to convey the faith the Romantics had in their poetry. Manuscript of P B Shelley's 'The Masque of Anarchy' P B Shelley’s manuscript of ‘The Masque of Anarchy’, 1819, was a reaction of furious outrage at the Peterloo Massacre. An avowedly political poem, it praises the non-violence of the Manchester protesters when faced with the aggression of the state. Free from known copyright restrictions The marginalised and oppressed Wordsworth was concerned about the elitism of earlier poets, whose highbrow language and subject matter were neither readily accessible nor particularly relevant to ordinary people. He maintained that poetry should be democratic; that it should be composed in ‘the language really spoken by men’ (Preface to Lyrical Ballads [1802]). For this reason, he tried to give a voice to those who tended to be marginalised and oppressed by society: the rural poor; discharged soldiers; ‘fallen’ women; the insane; and children.

Blake was radical in his political views, frequently addressing social issues in his poems and expressing his concerns about the monarchy and the church. His poem ‘London’ draws attention to the suffering of chimney-sweeps, soldiers and prostitutes. Lyrical Ballads: 1800 edition In the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth writes that he has ‘taken as much pains to avoid [poetic diction] as others ordinarily take to produce it’, trying instead to ‘bring [his] language near to the language of men’. Free from known copyright restrictions Children, nature and the sublime For the world to be regenerated, the Romantics said that it was necessary to start all over again with a childlike perspective. They believed that children were special because they were innocent and uncorrupted, enjoying a precious affinity with nature. Romantic verse was suffused with reverence for the natural world. In Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’ (1798) the poet hailed nature as the ‘Great universal Teacher!’ Recalling his unhappy times at Christ’s Hospital School in London, he explained his aspirations for his son, Hartley, who would have the freedom to enjoy his childhood and appreciate his surroundings.

The Romantics were inspired by the environment, and encouraged people to venture into new territories – both literally and metaphorically. In their writings they made the world seem a place with infinite, unlimited potential. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Walking Tour of Cumbria In August 1802, Samuel Taylor Coleridge set out from his home at Greta Hall, Keswick, for a week’s solo walking-tour in the nearby Cumbrian mountains. He kept detailed notes of the landscape around him, drawing rough sketches and maps. These notes and sketches are in Notebook No 2, one of 64 notebooks Coleridge kept between 1794 and his death. Free from known copyright restrictions A key idea in Romantic poetry is the concept of the sublime. This term conveys the feelings people experience when they see awesome landscapes, or find themselves in extreme situations which elicit both fear and admiration. For example, Shelley described his reaction to stunning, overwhelming scenery in the poem ‘Mont Blanc’ (1816).

Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful In this 1757 essay, the philosopher Edmund Burke discusses the attraction of the immense, the terrible and the uncontrollable. The work had a profound influence on the Romantic poets. Free from known copyright restrictions The second-generation Romantics Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge were first-generation Romantics, writing against a backdrop of war. Wordsworth, however, became increasingly conservative in his outlook: indeed, second-generation Romantics, such as Byron, Shelley and Keats, felt that he had ‘sold out’ to the Establishment. In the suppressed Dedication to Don Juan (1819-1824) Byron criticised the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, and the other ‘Lakers’, Wordsworth and Coleridge (all three lived in the Lake District). Byron also vented his spleen on the English Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh, denouncing him as an ‘intellectual eunuch’, a ‘bungler’ and a ‘tinkering slavemaker’ (stanzas 11 and 14).

Although the Romantics stressed the importance of the individual, they also advocated a commitment to mankind. Byron became actively involved in the struggles for Italian nationalism and the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule. Notorious for his sexual exploits, and dogged by debt and scandal, Byron quitted Britain in 1816. Lady Caroline Lamb famously declared that he was ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know.’ Similar accusations were pointed at Shelley. Nicknamed ‘Mad Shelley’ at Eton, he was sent down from Oxford for advocating atheism. He antagonised the Establishment further by his criticism of the monarchy, and by his immoral lifestyle. Letter from Lord Byron about his memoirs, 29 October 1819 In this letter to his publisher, John Murray, Byron notes the poor reception of the first two cantos of Don Juan, but states that he has written a hundred stanzas of a third canto. He also states that he is leaving his memoirs to his friend George Moore, to be read after his death, but that this text does not include details of his love affairs. Copyright: © GG Byron Female poets Female poets also contributed to the Romantic movement, but their strategies tended to be more subtle and less controversial.

Although Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) was modest about her writing abilities, she produced poems of her own; and her journals and travel narratives certainly provided inspiration for her brother. Women were generally limited in their prospects, and many found themselves confined to the domestic sphere; nevertheless, they did manage to express or intimate their concerns. For example, Mary Alcock (c. 1742-1798) penned ‘The Chimney Sweeper’s Complaint’. In ‘The Birth-Day’, Mary Robinson (1758-1800) highlighted the enormous discrepancy between life for the rich and the poor. Gender issues were foregrounded in ‘Indian Woman’s Death Song’ by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835). The Gothic Reaction against the Enlightenment was reflected in the rise of the Gothic novel. The most popular and well-paid 18th-century novelist, Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), specialised in ‘the hobgoblin-romance’. Her fiction held particular appeal for frustrated middle-class women who experienced a vicarious frisson of excitement when they read about heroines venturing into awe-inspiring landscapes.

She was dubbed ‘Mother Radcliffe’ by Keats, because she had such an influence on Romantic poets. The Gothic genre contributed to Coleridge’s Christabel (1816) and Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (1819). Mary Shelley (1797-1851) blended realist, Gothic and Romantic elements to produce her masterpiece Frankenstein (1818), in which a number of Romantic aspects can be identified. She quotes from Coleridge’s Romantic poem The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere. In the third chapter Frankenstein refers to his scientific endeavours being driven by his imagination. The book raises worrying questions about the possibility of ‘regenerating’ mankind; but at several points the world of nature provides inspiration and solace. The Mysteries of Udolpho The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe was one of the most popular and influential Gothic novels of the late 18th century. Free from known copyright restrictions The Byronic hero Romanticism set a trend for some literary stereotypes.

Byron’s Childe Harold (1812-1818) described the wanderings of a young man, disillusioned with his empty way of life. The melancholy, dark, brooding, rebellious ‘Byronic hero’, a solitary wanderer, seemed to represent a generation, and the image lingered. The figure became a kind of role model for youngsters: men regarded him as ‘cool’ and women found him enticing! Byron died young, in 1824, after contracting a fever. This added to the ‘appeal’. Subsequently a number of complex and intriguing heroes appeared in novels: for example, Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Edward Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (both published in 1847). Illustrations to Wuthering Heights by Clare Leighton The Byronic hero influenced Emily Brontë's portrayal of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. This 1931 edition of Brontë's novel is illustrated with wood engravings by Clare Leighton.

Free from known copyright restrictions Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798) juxtaposed moments of celebration and optimism with lamentation and regret. Keats thought in terms of an opposition between the imagination and the intellect. In a letter to his brothers, in December 1817, he explained what he meant by the term ‘Negative Capability’: ‘that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’ (22 December). Keats suggested that it is impossible for us to find answers to the eternal questions we all have about human existence. Instead, our feelings and imaginations enable us to recognise Beauty, and it is Beauty that helps us through life’s bleak moments. Life involves a delicate balance between times of pleasure and pain. The individual has to learn to accept both aspects: ‘“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’ (‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ [1819]).

Manuscript of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ from a manuscript copy believed to be in the hand of George Keats, the poet's brother. Free from known copyright restrictions The premature deaths of Byron, Shelley and Keats contributed to their mystique. As time passed they attained iconic status, inspiring others to make their voices heard. The Romantic poets continue to exert a powerful influence on popular culture. Generations have been inspired by their promotion of self-expression, emotional intensity, personal freedom and social concern. Footnotes [1] Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s poetry and prose: authoritative texts, criticisms, ed. by Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (New York; London: Norton, c.1977), p.485. Written by Percy Bysshe Shelley - Author, Poet, Playwright - Biography.com Percy Bysshe Shelley Known for his lyrical and long-form verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the most highly regarded English Romantic poets of the 19th century. His works include The Masque of Anarchy and Queen Mab.

IN THESE GROUPS “If Winter Comes, can Spring be far behind?” Percy Bysshe Shelley Synopsis Born in Broadbridge Heath, England, on August 4, 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the epic poets of the 19th century, and is best known for his classic anthology verse works such as Ode to the West Wind and The Masque of Anarchy. He is also well known for his long-form poetry, including Queen Mab and Alastor. He went on many adventures with his second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. He drowned in a sudden storm while sailing in Italy in 1822. Childhood and Adolescence Percy Bysshe Shelley, a controversial English writer of great personal conviction, was born on August 4, 1792. He grew up in the country, in the village Broadbridge Heath, just outside of West Sussex. He learned to fish and hunt in the meadows surrounding his home, often surveying the rivers and fields with his cousin and good friend Thomas Medwin. His parents were Timothy Shelley, a squire and member of Parliament, and Elizabeth Pilfold.

As the oldest of their seven children, Shelley left home at age of 10 to study at Syon House Academy, roughly 50 miles north of Broadbridge Heath and 10 miles west of central London. After two years, he enrolled at Eton College. While there, he was severely bullied, both physical and mentally, by his classmates. Shelley retreated into his imagination. Within a year’s time he had published two novels and two volumes of poetry, including St Irvyne and Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson. In the fall of 1810, Shelly entered University College, Oxford. It seemed a better academic environment for him than Eton, but after a few months, a dean demanded that Shelley visit his office. Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg had co-authored a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism. Its premise shocked and appalled the faculty (“…The mind cannot believe in the existence of a God.”), and the university demanded that both boys either acknowledge or deny authorship. Shelley did neither and was expelled.

Shelley’s parents were so exasperated by their son’s actions that they demanded he forsake his beliefs, including vegetarianism, political radicalism and sexual freedom. In August of 1811, Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook, a 16-year-old woman his parents had explicitly forbidden him to see. His love for her was centered on a hope that he could save her from committing suicide. They eloped, but Shelley was soon annoyed with her and became interested in a woman named Elizabeth Hitchener, a schoolteacher who inspired his first major poem, Queen Mab. The poem’s title character, a fairy originally invented by Shakespeare and described in Romeo and Juliet, describes what a utopian society on earth would be like. In addition to long-form poetry, Shelley also began writing political pamphlets, which he distributed by way of hot air balloons, glass bottles and paper boats. In 1812 he met his hero, the radical political philosopher William Godwin, author of Political Justice. Harriet and Mary Although Shelley’s relationship with Harriet remained troubled, the young couple had two children together. Their daughter, Elizabeth Ianthe, was born in June of 1813, when Shelley was 21.

Before their second child was born, Shelley abandoned his wife and immediately took up with another young woman. Well-educated and precocious, his new love interest was named Mary, the daughter of Shelley’s beloved mentor, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous feminist author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women. To Shelley’s surprise, Godwin was not in favor of Shelley dating his daughter. In fact, Godwin so disapproved that he would not speak with Mary for the next three years. Shelley and Mary fled to Paris, taking Mary’s sister, Jane, with them. They departed London by ship and, mostly traveling by foot, toured France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland, often reading aloud to each other from the works of Shakespeare and Rousseau. When the three finally returned home, Mary was pregnant. So was Shelley’s wife, Harriet. The news of Mary’s pregnancy brought Harriet to her wit’s end. She requested a divorce and sued Shelley for alimony and full custody of their children. Harriet’s second child with Shelley, Charles, was born in November of 1814. Three months later, Mary gave birth to a girl. The infant died just a few weeks later.

In 1816, Mary gave birth to their son, William. A dedicated vegetarian, Shelley authored several works on the diet and spiritual practice, including "A Vindication of Natural Diet" (1813). In 1815, Shelley wrote Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude, a 720-line poem, now recognized as his first great work. That same year, Shelley’s grandfather passed away and left him an annual allowance of 1,000 British pounds. Friendship with Lord Byron In 1816, Mary’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont, invited Shelley and Mary to join her on a trip to Switzerland. Claire had begun dating the Romantic poet Lord Byron and wished to show him off to her sister. By the time they commenced the trip, Lord Byron was less interested in Claire. Nevertheless, the three stayed in Switzerland all summer. Shelley rented a house on Lake Geneva very near to Lord Bryon’s and the two men became fast friends. Shelley wrote incessantly during his visit. After a long day of boating with Byron, Shelley returned home and wrote Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.

After a trip through the French Alps with Byron, he was inspired to write Mont Blanc, a pondering on the relationship between man and nature. Harriet’s Death and Shelley’s Second Marriage In the fall of 1816, Shelley and Mary returned to England to find that Mary’s half-sister, Fanny Imlay, had committed suicide. In December of that year it was discovered that Harriet had also committed suicide. She was found drowned in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park, London. A few weeks later, Shelley and Mary finally married. Mary’s father, William Godwin, was delighted by the news and accepted his daughter back into the family fold. Amidst their celebration, however, loss pursued Shelley. Following Harriet’s death, the courts ruled not to give Shelley custody of their children, asserting that they would be better off with foster parents. With these matters settled, Shelley and Mary moved to Marlow, a small village in Buckinghamshire. There, Shelley befriended John Keats and Leigh Hunt, both talented poets and writers. Shelley’s conversations with them encouraged his own literary pursuits.

Around 1817, he wrote Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden city. His publishers balked at the main storyline, however, which centers on incestuous lovers. He was asked to edit it and to find a new title for the work. In 1818, he reissued it as The Revolt of Islam. Though the title suggests the subject of Islam, the poem’s focus is religion in general and features socialist, political themes. Life in Italy Shortly after the publication of The Revolt of Islam, Shelley, Mary and Claire left for Italy. Lord Bryon was living in Venice, and Claire was on a mission to bring their daughter, Allegra, to visit with him. For the next several years, Shelley and Mary moved from city to city. While in Rome, their first-born son William died of a fever. A year later, their baby daughter, Clara Everina, died as well. Around this time, Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound. During their residency in Livorno, in 1819, he wrote The Cenci and The Masque of Anarchy and Men of England, a response to the Peterloo Massacre in England.

Death and Significance On July 8, 1822, just shy of turning 30, Shelley drowned while sailing his schooner back from Livorno to Lerici, after having met with Leigh Hunt to discuss their newly printed journal, The Liberal. Despite conflicting evidence, most papers reported Shelley’s death as an accident. However, based on the scene that was discovered on the boat’s deck, others speculated that he might have been murdered by an enemy who detested his political beliefs. Shelley’s body was cremated on the beach in Viareggio, where his body had washed ashore. Mary Shelley, as was the custom for women during the time, did not attend her husband’s funeral. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ashes were interred in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. More than a century later, he was memorialized in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. Related Videos Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information The Revolt Of Islam a book by Percy Bysshe Shelley — Bookmate Percy Bysshe Shelley The Revolt Of Islam Shelley is one of the most revered figures in the English poetical landscape.

Born on the 4th August 1792 he has, over the years, become rightly regarded as a major Romantic poet. Yet during his own lifetime little of his work was published. Publishers feared his radical views and possible charges against themselves for blasphemy and sedition. On 8th July 1822 a month before his 30th birthday, during a sudden storm, his tragic early death by drowning robbed our culture of many fine expected masterpieces. But in his short spell on earth he weaved much magic. The Revolt of Islam : A Poem in 12 Cantos has little to do with Islam although is set within the Ottoman Empire but focuses more on revolutionary themes of social reform and anti religious sentiments that were inspired by the French Revolution. It was composed in 1817 and consists of nearly 5,000 lines written in Spenserian stanzas, namely verses of nine lines with 8 of iambic pentameter and the final line in iambic hextameter. The publishers, Charles and James Ollier, refused to print the work without changes to the statements on religion and the dilution of the incest within the poem.

Shelley also changed the title and said of the poem that: I felt that it was in many respects a genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the sentiments were true, not assumed. And in this have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. more Shelley's most scandalous poem: but who really censored it? - Telegraph Book news Shelley's most scandalous poem: but who really censored it? A recently discovered copy of the uncensored poem suggests someone other than Shelley amended The Revolt of Islam Percy Bysshe Shelley Photo: Everett Collection / Rex Features By Felicity Capon 7:00AM GMT 25 Feb 2013 New light has been shed on the story surrounding the publication of Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam, his epic romance of nearly 5,000 lines in Spenserian stanzas. Whilst it is common knowledge that the poem was censored due to its anti-religious content and incest theme, it has always been assumed that Shelley himself made the amendments.

But the discovery of a copy of the original printing of the uncensored poem has led Nora Crook and Stephen Allen, writing in the Times Literary Supplement to believe that someone other than Shelley made the amendments. The story surrounding the poem has been well-documented. What originally began as Laon and Cythna was revised, after a group of Shelley’s friends and publishers, alerted by the printer, urged Shelley to amend its subversive content. Shelley’s publisher, Charles Ollier, along with Thomas Love Peacock, Shelley’s friend and neighbour, Mary Shelley and her stepsister Claire Clairmont, met with the poet on December 15, 1817 at his house in Great Marlow. They were alarmed by the anti-religious nature of the poem and its incestuous content. Both Ollier and the printer, Buchanan McMillan, would have faced prosecution for blasphemous libel if the poem was ever published. Related Articles Percy Shelley 'helped write Frankenstein' 24 Aug 2008 Shelley duly agreed to alter the objectionable passages. The title was changed and the poem republished.

The changes, mostly in Shelley’s hand, are preserved in a copy of Laon and Cythna that can be found in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. But the recent discovery acts as a missing link between the unexpurgated Laon and Cythna and the Morgan copy. Analysis of the marks on the copy suggests that someone other than Shelley, who was present at Great Marlow on December 15, wrote the suggestions that were then incorporated into the final text. But who? According to Crook and Allen, it would appear that out of those present at the Marlow expurgation, it was Peacock who censored the work. Shelley acted as a minor contributor and an unwilling one at that. Although this claim has previously been disputed by eminent dissenter FL Jones, who believed Shelley willingly made the alterations to his poem, it now seems that Shelley simply consented to the proposed changes. Peacock, who was himself already an established poet, was probably the only one present at the so-called literary committee who Shelley would have permitted to interfere with his work. Further analysis of the annotations also suggests that the anti-religious content of the poem was considered to be far more contentious than the incest theme.

Incest was not a civil crime in 1817, unlike blasphemous libel, and there were other works at the time on the topic of incest which were widely praised. The amendments achieved Ollier’s desired objective: The Revolt of Islam was not the subject of a prosecution. However, despite the entire saga that led to the censoring of this famous poem, a copy of Laon and Cythna still managed to fall into the hands of the Quarterly Review, which savaged the offensive work in 1819. The review questioned Shelley’s moral principles, haunting him for the rest of his life. "Attraction and Combination: The Science of Metamorphosis in Shelley's the Revolt of Islam" by Estermann, Barbara - Studies in Romanticism, Vol.

50, Issue 3, Fall 2011 | Online Research Library: Questia Read preview Article excerpt CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON SHELLEY'S DEBT TO SCIENCE, WHILE FOCUSING on Prometheus Unbound and other major work, neglects Shelley's Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century, a poem written in 1817, and published as The Revolt of Islam in 1818, after Shelley made changes insisted upon by his publisher. (1) Furthermore, Lloyd Abbey maintains that critics "have ignored its relation to Shelley's other poems and to Romantic poetry generally" and suggests that "the refinement, revision, and redefinition of this poem in Shelley's mature masterpieces is the backbone of his artistic achievement." (2) My focus will be on Shelley's indebtedness to the chemical theories of Sir Humphry Davy and Adam Walker, to a lesser extent, as a means of rereading this important formative work.

By acknowledging Shelley's debt to chemical philosophy, I hope to present The Revolt of Islam as a more coherent whole, a fusion of elements "kindled" into an inspired transformation on the physical, spiritual, and socio-political planes. The fusion or mingling of components is the catalyst for what can be seen as both the transformation and transfiguration of Laon and Cythna. In his "Preface" to the work, Shelley explains his intention to show transformation on two levels: (1) the individual level--"the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind" and (2) the socio-political level--" the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom" wrought by "the transient nature of ignorance and error," with the "inevitable fall" of tyranny (32). (3) These transformations on the personal and socio-political level are "inextricably blended" (1.9.201) with the elements of the earth, providing Shelley a vast canvas on which to paint his optimism about all of mankind achieving transfiguration through spiritual change and the annihilation of despotism and slavery.

Shelley's almost mythic interest in science and chemistry has been for some scholars a factor in understanding the man himself and his work. Most biographers point to Adam Walker as Shelley's earliest science teacher. According to Newman Ivey White, Walker's lectures began at Syon House in 1803, during Shelley's second year there, when Shelley may have purchased Walker's pamphlet, Analysis of a Course of Lectures in Natural and Experimental Philosophy, along with "an eight-page syllabus, listing the lectures, each of which was two hours' duration." White notes that these lectures "covered every branch of science in which Shelley later showed any interest." (4) This pamphlet is a basic primer, providing elementary concepts, experiments, and definitions, such as cohesion, attraction, composition, decomposition, and electricity as well as the significance of chemistry. For example, in "Lecture III. Principles of Chemistry," Walker discusses the elements of basic chemistry: Bodies are also considered as simple or compound.--Simple bodies are such as cannot be resolved into any thing more simple, such as pure earth, pure water, &c.

Compound bodies consist of two or more of the primary elements, such as an animal body; for earthly particles and various fluids form its composition. That branch of philosophy which examines the properties of these bodies, by compounding or decompounding them, is called CHEMISTRY,--a branch so extensive and important, that the sustenance of life--the arts and sciences--various manufactories,--nay, even trade and commerce, depend upon a continual composition and decomposition of natural bodies. (5) Shelley may have purchased this pamphlet as well as Walker's longer volume, A System of Familiar Philosophy in Twelve Lectures (first published in 1799 and approximately 550 pages). Although Walker covers many of the same areas as he did in the pamphlet, in this volume he articulates more complex ideologies and experimentation as well as his philosophy of the indestructibility of matter, the basis of Cythna's speech in Canto 9 and the underlying precept in the work itself: I leave water in a vessel exposed to the air: in time it all disappears.

… Subscribe to Questia and enjoy: Full access to this article and over 10 million more from academic journals, magazines, and newspapers Over 83,000 books Access to powerful writing and research tools Article details PRPEER-REVIEWED PERIODICAL Peer-reviewed publications on Questia are publications containing articles which were subject to evaluation for accuracy and substance by professional peers of the article's author(s). Shelley, Percy Bysshe--Criticism and interpretation The Revolt of Islam (Poetry collection)--Criticism and interpretation Metamorphosis (Literature)--Criticism and interpretation Shelley, Percy Bysshe--Criticism and interpretation The Revolt of Islam (Poetry collection)--Criticism and interpretation Metamorphosis (Literature)--Criticism and interpretation The Revolt of Islam, by Percy Bysshe Shelley : preface The Revolt of Islam, by Percy Bysshe Shelley Author’s Preface. The Poem which I now present to the world is an attempt from which I scarcely dare to expect success, and in which a writer of established fame might fail without disgrace.

It is an experiment on the temper of the public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live. I have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the ethereal combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human passion, all those elements which essentially compose a Poem, in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality; and in the view of kindling within the bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor misrepresentation nor prejudice can ever totally extinguish among mankind. For this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures, and appealing, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions, to the common sympathies of every human breast. I have made no attempt to recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present governing mankind, by methodical and systematic argument.

I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in the world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first canto, which is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic.

It is a succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind; its influence in refining and making pure the most daring and uncommon impulses of the imagination, the understanding, and the senses; its impatience at ‘all the oppressions which are done under the sun;’ its tendency to awaken public hope, and to enlighten and improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that tendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the bloodless dethronement of their oppressors, and the unveiling of the religious frauds by which they had been deluded into submission; the tranquillity of successful patriotism, and the universal toleration and benevolence of true philanthropy; the treachery and barbarity of hired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment and hatred, but kindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants; the confederacy of the Rulers of the World and the restoration of the expelled Dynasty by foreign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots, and the victory of established power; the consequences of legitimate despotism — civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an

 utter extinction of the domestic affections; the judicial murder of the advocates of Liberty; the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure earnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient nature of ignorance and error and the eternity of genius and virtue.

Such is the series of delineations of which the Poem consists. And, if the lofty passions with which it has been my scope to distinguish this story shall not excite in the reader a generous impulse, an ardent thirst for excellence, an interest profound and strong such as belongs to no meaner desires, let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness for human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes. It is the business of the Poet to communicate to others the pleasure and the enthusiasm arising out of those images and feelings in the vivid presence of which within his own mind consists at once his inspiration and his reward. The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes of men during the excesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed that whole generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to a hopeless inheritance of ignorance and misery, because a nation of men who had been dupes and slaves for centuries were incapable of conducting themselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon as some of their fetters were partially loosened.

That their conduct could not have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and thoughtlessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all its recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its deformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human things which bears the shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure haven after the storms are past. Methinks, those who now live have survived an age of despair. The French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilised mankind produced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and the improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important crises produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that event extended to every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures were those which participated the most extensively in these sympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was impossible to realise.

If the Revolution had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the demagogues, and the re-establishment of successive tyrannies in France, was terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilised world. Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under the calamities of a social state according to the provisions of which one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent? This is the consequence of the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute perseverance and indefatigable hope, and long-suffering and long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of men of intellect and virtue. Such is the lesson which experience teaches now.

But, on the first reverses of hope in the progress of French liberty, the sanguine eagerness for good overleaped the solution of these questions, and for a time extinguished itself in the unexpectedness of their result. Thus, many of the most ardent and tender-hearted of the worshippers of public good have been morally ruined by what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored appeared to show as the melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes. Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a disappointment that unconsciously finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This influence has tainted the literature of the age with the hopelessness of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics (I ought to except sir W. Drummond’s “Academical Questions”; a volume of very acute and powerful metaphysical criticism.), and inquiries into moral and political science, have become little else than vain attempts to revive exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those of Mr. Malthus (It is remarkable, as a symptom of the revival of public hope, that Mr.

Malthus has assigned, in the later editions of his work, an indefinite dominion to moral restraint over the principle of population. This concession answers all the inferences from his doctrine unfavourable to human improvement, and reduces the “Essay on Population” to a commentary illustrative of the unanswerableness of “Political Justice”.), calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind into a security of everlasting triumph. Our works of fiction and poetry have been overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But mankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief I have composed the following Poem. I do not presume to enter into competition with our greatest contemporary Poets. Yet I am unwilling to tread in the footsteps of any who have preceded me. I have sought to avoid the imitation of any style of language or versification peculiar to the original minds of which it is the character; designing that, even if what I have produced be worthless, it should still be properly my own.

Nor have I permitted any system relating to mere words to divert the attention of the reader, from whatever interest I may have succeeded in creating, to my own ingenuity in contriving to disgust them according to the rules of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in what appeared to me the most obvious and appropriate language. A person familiar with nature, and with the most celebrated productions of the human mind, can scarcely err in following the instinct, with respect to selection of language, produced by that familiarity. There is an education peculiarly fitted for a Poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education, indeed, can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be something better. The circumstances of my accidental education have been favourable to this ambition. I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and the sea, and the solitude of forests: Danger, which sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my playmate.

I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me, like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the materials for the imagery of my Poem have been drawn.

I have considered Poetry in its most comprehensive sense; and have read the Poets and the Historians and the Metaphysicians (In this sense there may be such a thing as perfectibility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the concession often made by the advocates of human improvement, that perfectibility is a term applicable only to science.) whose writings have been accessible to me, and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth, as common sources of those elements which it is the province of the Poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in themselves constitute men Poets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of Poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not; and which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address. I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any contemporary style.

But there must be a resemblance, which does not depend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular age. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live; though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded. Thus, the tragic poets of the age of Pericles; the Italian revivers of ancient learning; those mighty intellects of our own country that succeeded the Reformation, the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, the Dramatists of the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon (Milton stands alone in the age which he illumined.); the colder spirits of the interval that succeeded; — all resemble each other, and differ from every other in their several classes. In this view of things, Ford can no more be called the imitator of Shakespeare than Shakespeare the imitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other points of resemblance between these two men than that which the universal and inevitable influence of their age produced.

And this is an influence which neither the meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can escape; and which I have not attempted to escape. I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure. Yet there will be found some instances where I have completely failed in this attempt, and one, which I here request the reader to consider as an erratum, where there is left, most inadvertently, an alexandrine in the middle of a stanza. But in this, as in every other respect, I have written fearlessly. It is the misfortune of this age that its Writers, too thoughtless of immortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write with the fear of Reviews before their eyes.

This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when Poetry was not. Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate and limit its powers, cannot subsist together. Longinus could not have been the contemporary of Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of criticism never presumed to assert an understanding of its own; it has always, unlike true science, followed, not preceded, the opinion of mankind, and would even now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest Poets to impose gratuitous fetters on their own imaginations, and become unconscious accomplices in the daily murder of all genius either not so aspiring or not so fortunate as their own. I have sought therefore to write, as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton wrote, with an utter disregard of anonymous censure. I am certain that calumny and misrepresentation, though it may move me to compassion, cannot disturb my peace. I shall understand the expressive silence of those sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak.

I shall endeavour to extract, from the midst of insult and contempt and maledictions, those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious appeal to the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the Public judge that my composition is worthless, I shall indeed bow before the tribunal from which Milton received his crown of immortality, and shall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be worthless. I cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose doctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge, and whose eloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure as the hired sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome might affix to what he should produce.

It was at the period when Greece was led captive and Asia made tributary to the Republic, fast verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a multitude of Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the unworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious subsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the vices and vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead, with a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favour of that contempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in portents, the most fatal substitute for benevolence in the imaginations of men, which, arising from the enslaved communities of the East, then first began to overwhelm the western nations in its stream. Were these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise and lofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with a salutary awe? The latest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his footsteps would disdain to hold life on such conditions. The Poem now presented to the Public occupied little more than six months in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting ardour and enthusiasm.

I have exercised a watchful and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which long labour and revision is said to bestow. But I found that, if I should gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh from my mind. And, although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years. I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those opinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the characters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. The erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different from my own.

In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to Revenge, or Envy, or Prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world. Poet Seers » Percy Bysshe Shelley The Romantic Poets » Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley View: Shelley’s Poems Percy Shelley – Biography The son of a prosperous squire, he entered Oxford in 1810, where readings in philosophy led him toward a study of the empiricists and the modern skeptics, notably William Godwin. In 1811 he and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg published their pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, which resulted in their immediate expulsion from the university. The same year Shelley eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, by whom he eventually had two children, Ianthe and Charles. Supported reluctantly by their fathers, the young couple traveled through Great Britain.

Shelley’s life continued to be dominated by his desire for social and political reform, and he was constantly publishing pamphlets. His first important poem, Queen Mab, privately printed in 1813, set forth a radical system of curing social ills by advocating the destruction of various established institutions. In 1814 Shelley left England for France with Mary Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin. During their first year together they were plagued by social ostracism and financial difficulties. However, in 1815 Shelley’s grandfather died and left him an annual income. Laon and Cynthna appeared in 1817 but was withdrawn and reissued the following year as The Revolt of Islam; it is a long poem in Spenserian stanzas that tells of a revolution and illustrates the growth of the human mind aspiring toward perfection. After Harriet Shelley’s suicide in 1816, Shelley and Mary officially married. In 1817 Harriet’s parents obtained a decree from the lord chancellor stating that Shelley was unfit to have custody of his children. The following year Shelley and Mary left England and settled in Italy.

By this time their household consisted of their own three children and Mary’s half-sister Claire Claremont and her daughter Allegra (whose father was Lord Byron). On July 8, 1822, Shelley was drowned while sailing in the Bay of Spezia, near Lerici. Poetry of Shelley Shelley was one of the main Romantic Poets , whocombinedpowerful poetic gifts with a questioning ofthe existing social order of the day. He offered an emotive and passionate appeal to the social improvement of society. “Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” This quote from Ode to the West Wind is symbolic of his style and aspirations and also the sorrows and sufferings of life he frequently encountered. Further Reading from Amazon.com

Question: Which of the Romantic Poets wrote 'The Revolt Of Islam'?
Answer: PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY